


V E R E : D I C T U M

by Esasel



Category: W.I.T.C.H.
Genre: Banishment, Canon - Comics, Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Loss of Powers, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Public Humiliation, Punishment, Rituals, Transformation, hair cutting, kandrakar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26760757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esasel/pseuds/Esasel
Summary: .A tranquil and terrible version of Kandrakar's judicial sentence for the Lord Cedric and his crimes commited under the command of Prince Phobos of Meridian.(returning to my childhood from time to time, a W.I.T.C.H. fanfiction was inevitable).
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	V E R E : D I C T U M

Before the judgement of the Oracle and the Old of Kandrakar was brought the snake Lord Cedric. They had his huge form bound, his head bowed, as he slithered into the center of the luminous hall to be looked upon, but his eyes flashed stubbornly from under the frown of his red reptilian brows. He was proud even now, calculating still.

Yet he must have known his case was lost.

They changed him. Slowly, persistently, forced him down on knees that shook, human knees now, so fragile now, fell they too hard, they'd shatter easily. He felt it on the clouded marble floor unlike the many times he'd used this form yet never lived it. Now, Cedric knew he would be shattered. The change within Kandrakar was painful to his body because it was no longer one of his illusions. It was real.

Cedric broke into cold sweat and moaned with a crazed fatigue that strained his new, weak limbs as he shrunk to a pale shade of what he should have been allowed remain. Never had he felt this exposed and afraid and disgusted by himself - no, not himself. This was not him, never would be. He was too small to be.

But he craned his neck and held his head high when he was humiliated. Would they though thinking him defeated dare not know him meek!

A warden came forth and behind his back. A titan pair of armoured hands gathered his hair almost gently at the base of his nape. The sensation so tender made Cedric want to vomit where he crouched. His inner serpent rebelled, and his remembering spine wound in a curling motion against the ministration, but it was to no avail. He only pulled the fist around his hair tighter with it.

Then came the blade. It was a magic old, this blade. They cut his hair at the base of his neck, cut the last bond to his birthright to be a nature they detested, and Cedric, in the loss of his past, his very soul he thought, he gasped and spasmed.

He fell back into a heap on the ground, panting, and his watery eyes found the long, slack rope of his blond hair, caught and held high against the light in the fist of the warden like the lifeless body of a snake as severed from its head. Never, since the day he was born, had Cedric's hair been cut. A sob formed in his throat, but loathing with himself made him muffle and swallow the noise. He touched his nape, naked. The last remnants of his once arcane pride prickled like bleeding out across his knuckles when the short, fresh strands there tickled him.

Lord Cedric's might was gone.

He turned to the Oracle, heeding him with nothing but exalted hate, and spat the last venom he felt burning in his now useless form; words. Words, if not venom, demanded to be spewn from him, and he was no longer enough a deity to deny them.

"You have bereft me of myself and claim to be merciful? You are not, Oracle. This is the crueler death."

"Those, Lord Cedric, are stark words from someone so butter-tongued as you."

"I wasted enough time licking the feet of emperors - and those who purport to be!"

The Oracle smiled, a smile that appeared full of regretul hope for that so spiteful soul spread out beneath his gaze. His handwave was as weak as a tired dove's wing when he merely whispered: "Take him away."

And taken was Cedric then, to a freedom that would be prison to him. Earthbound, he struggled. His eyes, maybe for the first time, flooded with a terror that he could not hide.

He would be nothing now, and less than that; he would be human.


End file.
